50mm lenses

[FrankS]

So, I've finally got my 50mm lens collection completed and will be looking for some time to give them a test. On the camera is a Fed f3.5 collapsible lens. (Yes, it does collapse all the way to make a very compact package. This lens was bought from Ole in Norway!) In front of the camera from left to right are: Canon f1.8 (bought from Brian), Summicron f2 (bought with the assistance of Don), Jupiter 8 f2 (bought from Kin) and an Industar 61LD f2.8 (55mm). (gift from Joe) What a great place RFF is for photo gear collectors/users! I plan to use just 1 roll of film on 1 body and switch the lenses to eliminate processing differences. Any suggestions for the test subject matter?

[matu]

Pretty collection you have made.
If I stop buying compact rangefinders I may get one of those someday.
I'll be watching your pictures.

[g0tr00t]

Subject matter....Hmmm. A brick building?

[Todd.Hanz]

Originally posted by FrankS
I plan to use just 1 roll of film on 1 body and switch the lenses to eliminate processing differences. Any suggestions for the test subject matter?

Umhhhh, very nice looking women?

Todd

[rover]

Originally posted by Todd.Hanz
Umhhhh, very nice looking women?

Todd

Yup, that will do.

[FrankS]

I like the way you guys think!

[taffer]

Originally posted by rover
Yup, that will do.

Agree

[Tim]

Funnilly enough, I have been thinking along the same lines. I am going to try and get out this weekend and compare my 35's.

My initial thoughts for test shots were:

1) Head and shoulder portrait shot at f4
2) Still life of some sort at f2
3) candid people shot at f8
4) scenery shot at f5.6
5) scenery shot at f16

trying to get some real world stuff instead of a shot of a newspaper pinned on a wall.....(I'm more interested in the clarity and appearance than the ultimate "ooh look you can read the text in column 4 of the newspaper")

Anyway, as Frank said - ideas?

tim

[Brian Sweeney]

Like the old song "She was built like a Brick-House"...

[Tim]

And yeh, very nice looking women would be great, and there's no shortage of them in Sydney in summer. Scantily clad, too, many of them.
Unfortunately you can't ask them to stay in one place while you change lenses (well, I suppose you could but you may get slapped)
And for the (few) women on this forum - to be fair I'd have to go and look for nice beefy men. And while there are also plenty of them around, I'm not going photographing them. Sorry....

tim

[FrankS]

... to be fair I'd have to go and look for nice beefy men. And while there are also plenty of them around, I'm not going photographing them. Sorry.... Tim

I'm not that artistic either.

[Kris]

Send those lenses to me. I'll test them on Midsumma Gay and Lesbian Festival - both girls and guys.

Boy, I must be a sick person!

[Tim]

Originally posted by Kris


Boy, I must be a sick person!

Well, you live in Melbourne.......

(ducks for cover...)



tim

[ddimaria]

Hi Frank, I was just reading your post and noticing that you already have an industar-61. If you want I can send you a

"something in Russian"-26m

instead. Makes no difference to me as I'm not using either. Let me know.

DD

[denishr]

DD, that's an Industar 26 - even has a FED logo. It usually comes with FED 2 and/or FED 3, from what I've seen. Not much of a performer, usually, although some shots I've taken with it were quite nice. Not super sharp, as Leitz glass, or even a Yashica, but nice.

Denis

[GeneW]

All this talk of 50mm lenses and Jupiter 8's has reminded me that I'm on the lookout for a good quality silver Jupiter 8! I'm using my black one on my Bessa R2 and need to replace the one on my Zorki 3M. Silver looks nicer on the Zorki.

Anyone have a decent user to spare? I'm willing to part with insignificant amounts of money

Gene

[RML]

Gene, if the J-8 thread is anything to go by the J-8 might become the next Canon P: increasing in value and becoming rarer by the day. Maybe we here on RFF can stock up on J-8s, keep them away from the public, push the J-8's reputation to the sky, and sell them at a profit in some years to all those new J-8 addicts?

[Brian Sweeney]

What I will never figure out about Russian Lenses is how they get the HARD part right (the optics) and then BLOW the mechanical portion: The Helical, RF coupling, Aperture Clicks, and other Machining varries greatly from lens-to-lens. This is the country that made the MIG-25 (Mach 3) in the '60s! I suspect that they ran there tools too long, so the quality of the lens depends on the condition of the tool used to make it. Pure Speculation, but something systemically wrong had to be in place to screw up quality control.

Let's keep those prices down; like $2 for my J-8m and $14 for my Helios-103.

[iMacfan]

I'd just remind you from recent personal experience that the lens to flange distance on the russian lenses is not quite the same as with the Leica and VC lenses and bodies. If you are using f2-2.8, you are likely to get an incorrect focus point.

David

[rover]

Apparently glass making is a long standing (centuries) Russian industry. They have natural resources of excellent sands and a tradition of making very high quality glasses.

I had read that in many places, but most recently is mentioned in the Princelle book.

[Brian Sweeney]

I had a Jupiter-9 in LTM that was calibrated for the Leica RF. The focus scale did not quite go to infinity, but it physically stopped where my Canon 7 RF indicated "infinity" should be. It was accurate at minimum focus at F2. The optics were GREAT but the focus helical had a rough spot that set it apart from Contax and Nikkor lenses. It was the "black Export" version. Anyone using Russian lenses should check the close-up wide-open and infinity focus before taking any significant shots with the lenses.

I use my Jupiter-8m and Helios-103 on my Contax IIIa and Nikon S2. I changed the flange-to-film distance using shims on the S2 to work (better) with the Contax lenses.

I had a Jupiter-9 in chrome for the Contax Mount cameras. The helical was so sloppy that it moved back-and-forth more than 0.5mm at a fixed distance.

[Pherdinand]

It's not a matter of lack of intelligence or handyness of the workers/designers. It's the way things worked in that time.
There was not much motivation to do the job right for the assembly line folks in a stinky communist factory. I still remember those times (not in USSR but in Romania where i lived - more or less the same thing), it did not matter *how* you make the things only how many and how fast. The "plans" (the "5-year plan" was the most famous bullsh|t invented) required n pieces of, say, Jupiter-8 lenses to be made in a certain time. If something went wrong (and usually it did), like, the components were not delivered in time or some tools were broken/missing or a technician got ill, then the plan still had to be made - either by speeding up the process and producing cr@p, or by lying on paper about the numbers. The latter often ended up in serious problems for certain persons who were supposed to control the paperworks, therefore in industry it was not often applied (it worked in agriculture though); the former never ended up in any problems since nobody really cared what the end result's quality is.

The MIG's, space technology and other hi-tech equpiment were an exception, since they were required to eventually WORK, not by the average population but by the government, and their number of production was very low. Therefore the risk of catching you if you didn't do it well was much higher and to bribe the quality controller would have been next to impossible - there you have the best motivation one can imagine.

[Pherdinand]

I have a story/anecdote related a bit to the above quality-control issue.
We lived in a flat in a 4-story building when i was a kid. 4 rooms, 2 toilets, apparently quite luxurious but some things just never worked in those appartments.
A neighbour of us had one of his toilets never working. It was just impossible to flush it without flooding the place. He tried every cleaning method possible, nothing worked.
After 10 years of living there, he decided on a major CLA of his appartment and called the specialists - masons, painters - of the neighborhood. They also picked up the cemented toilet seats to finally repair it. One of the masons was between the workers who actually built those appartments long time ago.
Under the infamous defective toilet seat, in the hole, they have found two unopened, intact bottles of beer, half liter each. The old mason apologized: he remembered that during the work they were drinking beer and suddenly a control person showed up, so he quickly had to hide the beer bottles somewhere. Then they've forgot about it and put the seat down above the bottles.

[GeneW]

Originally posted by RML
Gene, if the J-8 thread is anything to go by the J-8 might become the next Canon P: increasing in value and becoming rarer by the day. Maybe we here on RFF can stock up on J-8s, keep them away from the public, push the J-8's reputation to the sky, and sell them at a profit in some years to all those new J-8 addicts?

LOL, Remy
A better investment than Microsoft!

Gene

[rbiemer]

Frank,
how about a beautiful woman wrapped in newspaper standinig in front of a brick wall?
Or, more seriously, some thing fairly scenic with some trees at close and far distances?
Or how about Hudson bay?
Really though, I think most any thing except test targets will be good.
Rob